Swing State Unemployment

What do the states of Michigan, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, have in common? They have all been designated by the MSM as swing or battleground states. The MSM says that they could play a pivotal role in the presidential election in November. And guess what! Unemployment in June, 2012, rose in six of these states.

Only in Ohio did the unemployment rate fall. The unemployment rate remained unchanged in Florida, North Carolina, and in Nevada (which, has the highest national unemployment rate – 11.6 percent. Do they know that in Searchlight?). The unemployment actually rose in the other six “swing” states

And this is happening during an Obama administration whose economic advisors pledged that unemployment would not go above 8 percent if the economic stimulus was passed. And had the labor force participation rate remained as it was when the recession officially ended in June, 2009, the unemployment rate would be 11 percent. People giving up looking for work and dropping out of the labor force is the only way to produce a drop in the unemployment rate. Further, John Williams at Shadow Government Statistics says that the unemployment rate would be 22.3 percent today if it were calculated the same way it was before 1994, when long term discouraged workers were included in the unemployment rate.

So President Barack Hussein “kill list” Obama can talk and talk all he wants to about Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital. And the MSM can talk all it wants to about Ann Romney and what she does to try to recover from MS. But the November, 2012, election will be about one thing: jobs!

Now I’m not one to wish unemployment (or any economic misfortune) on anyone. But after figuratively butting their heads against a brick wall for this long (since January, 2009), and after hearing all the economic promises that never even came close to being true, and after being saddled with additional debt, I have to conclude that the American people are beginning to wake up and see what the 2012 election is really about: repudiation of the same-old same-old.

I’ll be the first to admit that there is a long time between now and November. And quite a bit can happen (can anyone say “October surprise”?). But when people without jobs go in to vote in November, they will think more about their current situation than about what Romney did or didn’t do while at Bain Capital. And all the political campaign ads in the world will not change that situation.